


Murphy's Law

by LittleTurtle95



Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Coming Out, Established Carlos Reyes/TK Strand, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Happy Ending, Homophobic Language, Hurt TK Strand, Insecurity, M/M, Major Character Injury, Murphy's Law, POV Outsider, Parent-Child Relationship, Sexual Harassment, Soft Carlos Reyes, TK Strand Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24540790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleTurtle95/pseuds/LittleTurtle95
Summary: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.That’s why when Cara asks her out on a date Camila should have known better than to let her guard down.When a group of assholes harass them on their date she’s not surprised. When her date runs away in panic, she’s not surprised. When a reckless stranger gets almost stabbed to death because he stood up for them she’s not surprised, either. When the police arrives and the officer freaks out as soon as he sees what happened, she’s definitely confused.
Relationships: Carlos Reyes/TK Strand, Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 18
Kudos: 226





	Murphy's Law

**Author's Note:**

> I just finished binging 9-1-1 Lone Star, it's pride month, these are rough times, and I just wanted to share a bit of positivity, if you're up for it 🌈
> 
> TW: homophobia, verbal harassment, non graphic violence, blood, slight cursing

_Anything that can go wrong will go wrong._

Camila knew that very well, she knew that better than anyone.

The life of a gay latina in Texas was hard enough as it was, but she was the _epitome_ of bad luck. She couldn’t count all the times she embarrassed herself in front of her crushes; the girls she liked were always straight, taken, or not into her; her classmates loved to make fun of her and what they called her _weird tendencies_ and she wasn’t even out with her parents yet.

She believed that if she looked in the Urban Dictionary definition of _gay disaster_ she would have found her own face smiling at herself from her phone screen.

That was why when Cara asked her out on a date – Cara, the cutest girl in her lab class, the girl she always looked at when she thought she wasn’t looking – she should have expected that something like that was going to happen.

Because nothing good happened to her, _ever_.

The date had gone surprisingly well. The two girls had met in a coffee shop, they had shared a frappe like in the cheesy romcoms her sister binge watched before exams, they had held hands when they went out for a walk, and for a second Camila had dared to let her guard down, to hope this was going to be a good day, after all. She actually thought they could even kiss goodbye at the end of the date. That would have been her first kiss.

How naive.

They were walking down the streets, hands laced, exchanging side glances and smiles, and Camila thought that was the best day in her whole life. Then they heard him.

“Hey, sexy. Is that your pretty girlfriend?” 

She felt Cara’s hand tense and squeezed it.

“Just keep walking,” she whispered, because that was what her mom and sister taught her to do in these situations.

“Cat got your tongue sweetheart?” another voice asked, and she looked back briefly to give a quick look at the men behind her. There were four of them.

 _Of course,_ she said internally, _of course something had to go terribly wrong._

“I bet you little chicks would change your mind if you tried a ride on the right side,” the first voice said, “we can show you the real way, the way it works.”

The girls did not reply and kept walking, still holding hands, nervously looking at their surroundings to find any way out of the situation. The street was almost empty, and the few people in sight didn’t look like they minded what was happening in the slightest.

“I bet you just haven’t found the right men yet,” a third voice said.

“And who would that be? _You_?” someone scoffed, and Camila felt a harder squeeze on her hand.

There was a young man with a stern look on his face and a smirk, walking towards them with a confidence Camila felt jealous of.

“Mind your fucking business,” one of the men said, dismissing him with a mindless gesture of his hand.

“You are annoying them. Leave the girls alone,” the young man pushed. Camila wanted to thank him, but she didn’t want to worsen the situation so she kept silent. 

“Do you feel annoyed, kitten?” one of them asked, and Camila felt a hand brush her hair. She tensed, her heart starting to beat faster. “Am I scaring you?”

The girl turned around to face them, looking at the stranger with wide terrified eyes, without saying a word, her lips sealed.

“See? She said nothing. The little bitch is happy about it, I bet she was waiting for this, for a true man to show her how it works.”

The stranger smiled wider. “I know how a _true man_ looks like, and trust me darling, it’s definitely not like you. You look more like a dumb ugly monkey.”

Camila agreed, the man really looked like a dumb ugly monkey, even if she wouldn’t have dared to say that out loud. 

One of the man’s friends laughed, and that was it.

Camila heard Cara scream before she saw the man punching the kind stranger straight in the face. The stranger stumbled back and hissed, his hands flying to his nose in pain.

“Run,” she heard Cara whisper, and felt dragged away just when the stranger was reciprocating the fist.

They ran for a few seconds when Camila stopped, pulling Cara by the hand she was still holding. “Wait! There’s four of them, he’s alone, we have to help!”

“They could be armed! We can’t help him, run!” 

Camila looked at Cara, her hazel eyes wide with worry, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted, panting. Then she looked back at the fight. The stranger wasn’t handling it too bad given he was alone against four, but he was clearly the one struggling the most.

“No,” she said, leaving Cara’s hand and taking the phone from her pocket. “We have to call for help, at least.”

Cara looked at her in fear, and shame, and guilt. She turned on her heels and ran away, leaving her alone. Camila couldn’t bring herself to blame her. She typed the number with trembling hands and called.

_9-1-1 what is your emergency?_

“Please! They’re hitting him! He just wanted to help me, please!”

_Calm down darling, what’s your name?_

“Camila,” she whispered, her voice cracking.

_It’s okay Camila, my name is Grace, I’m with you. Tell me what happened, who is hitting who? Where are you?_

“Those men, they harassed me and my girlfriend and a stranger asked them to stop. Now they're- _oh my God!_ ”

_Camila? You still there? What happened?_

“One of them had a knife! They stabbed him! Oh my God it’s my fault, oh my-”

_Where are you? You have to give me your location, now._

Camila looked around in confusion, then he managed to babble out the address.

_Help is on the way, dear. Don’t engage in a fight on your own okay? You did good. It’s okay._

“They killed him. I think they killed him,” she sobbed. “They’re running away, what do I do?”

 _If the scene is safe approach him and put your ear next to his mouth to tell me if he’s breathing. But only if they left, you hear me? Do not get closer if the men are still on the scene,_ Grace said, and Camila obliged.

The police took only three minutes to get there. Camila kept talking with Grace on the phone the whole time, making sure the stranger was alive. She believed he was, she felt a faint breath on her skin when she checked with her ear near his mouth, and she was dabbing the stab wound with her hands to stop the blood. A lot of blood. There was blood everywhere.

 _Of course my first date had to end like this,_ she thought bitterly, as she looked at the police car pulling over on the street. 

A policeman jumped off the car and came closer, and Camila stiffened. 

The man’s face looked calm and reassuring. He was young, probably a latino like her, judging by the looks, and his expression wasn’t threatening, but Camila couldn’t help but feel a bit scared. She had learned long ago not to trust a police officer, especially a man. 

“Officer Reyes, APD. What-” the man said, then he froze on the spot and fell silent for a moment, staring at the man on the ground, blinking slowly.

“It’s not my fault!” Camila cried, taking advantage of the sudden silence. “I swear, I didn’t kill him! I’m here because the woman on the phone asked me to check on him, I didn’t do this, I swear!”

The officer looked like he didn’t even hear a word of what she just said at all. He took the radio in his hands and asked the paramedics to hurry. Camila frowned. He looked way paler than how he was when he arrived a few seconds earlier, and she guessed it was because he was young, he probably wasn’t used to see this kind of injuries on the job. He fell on his knees and touched the stranger’s neck, sighing in relief at the sign of a pulse.

“I don’t even know him. There were four men harassing me, and he told them to stop, one of them had a knife. I’m sorry.”

The sound of the sirens filled the air and Camila saw the ambulance appear at the end of the street. Some people started to crowd the scene, clearly curios. The officer looked completely at a loss of words, he looked at the man on the ground again, then back at Camila and said “keep your hands on the wound,” then he quickly stood up and started to keep the crowd away. Camila had never met an officer so weird. She didn’t know if she was supposed to be more afraid of him for that or not at all.

The paramedics surrounded her and a woman with long black hair, clear eyes and a sweet smile praised her for her work and told her to stand back. Camila thought she was beautiful. 

The officer came back exchanging quick anxious words with the woman, that was clearly the one in charge, then he looked over at her and approached her again. 

“Hey,” the officer said, and cleared his throat, glancing a look at the paramedics carrying the stranger on the ambulance.

“Are you going to arrest me?”

The officer looked shaken, Camila couldn’t even remember his name anymore. He really had to be new at this.

“No, I’m not going to arrest you. I need you to tell me what happened. What’s your name? I’m officer Reyes. I’m here to help.”

 _Reyes. Now that was it,_ she thought. He looked like he was trying to put himself together and only slightly succeeding.

“Camila,” she whispered, not sure if she should trust the man with her family name.

“Did you see what happened Camila? Can you tell me?”

The girl nodded. “It wasn’t my fault,” she said.

“Of course it wasn’t,” officer Reyes assured her, and she was starting to think that he believed her.

“I was out on a date, we had just gone out of the coffee shop down the street, when this four men started harassing us. I didn’t… I didn’t tell them to leave. I’m sorry,” she said, but the officer didn’t comment on it. “The stranger stood up for us and told them to stop, he told that they weren’t real men, then he told one of them that he looked like a dumb ugly monkey and the man punched him in the face, they started to fight.”

Officer Reyes closed his eyes and shook his head, a weak smile showing on his lips, something between incredulous and proud. That was weird.

“My… _date_ ,” she explained, because she didn’t know if the cop would have listened to a word more if he knew she had been going out with a girl, “ran away and I stayed to call 911.”

“We need his name too, to ask him a few questions,” the officer said and Camila frowned. She had already said the man was a stranger to her.

“I don’t know his name, sir.”

The officer raised one of his brows. “You don’t know your date’s name?”

 _Ah._ She thought, biting his lower lip. _He means Cara._

Camila sighed. “Her name is Cara Stanford,” she said, trying to sound confident.

Reyes blinked a few times, then a flash of understanding lit up his eyes. “That was why they went after you, is it? Because you were two girls,” he said, he sounded outraged.

“Yes sir, I think so,” Camila said, “but you can’t go after her. Her parents don’t know that she… that she is... please, don’t show up at home. I’ll call her, I’ll ask her to go to the police station if you need her. You can’t tell her parents what happened, please, they can’t know she’s-”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. You’ll bring her to the station, it’s fine. I won’t expose her, I promise. You think you can give a description of the men that harassed you?”

Camila nodded again. “Okay. You’re doing good, you have nothing to be worried about. Now follow me, would you?”

“Where are we going?” she asked. She was slowly starting to trust the man, and he didn’t even flinch when she told him about Cara, but she couldn’t be certain it was no trouble.

“We’re going to the hospital to get you checked out. You can call your parents and ask them to pick you up there.”

“I don’t want to go to the hospital,” she said, “I’m fine.”

“I’d feel better if I got you checked up. And I have to go to the hospital anyway, so,” the man said, and he gave her the best smile Camila thought he could master at the moment. He didn’t look like a newbie now that she was paying attention to him, so she wondered why he had looked so lost earlier. Probably he was having a bad day.

She reluctantly got on the car, on the front. Officer Reyes started the car in silence, she could feel he was anxious but was trying his best to hide it.

“Am I going to jail if he dies?” she asked weakly.

The man held the steering wheel tighter. “He’s not going to die,” he said, his voice unnaturally steady.

“But _if_ he dies…”

“You’re not going to jail Camila, nobody is going to arrest you, no matter what happens to him,” he said with a calm voice, “but you won’t have to worry about it anyway because nobody is going to die. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“How are you? Did they hurt you?” 

Camila shook her head. “I told you I’m fine. Do I have to text my parents?”

“Yes, please, tell them you’re going at the Dell Seton’s Hospital, they’ll be able to pick you up there. I’ll tell them it wasn’t your fault and you did nothing wrong, don’t worry.”

She nodded and did what the man said. She was finally starting to feel more at ease in the car, and less worried. She wondered if Cara was going to speak with her again after this hell of a date.

She glanced a side look at the officer and said “you’re a weird cop.”

He didn’t look offended. “I sure hope so,” he said, again with that weak smile.

“They tell me I’m a weird girl all the time,” she whispered, looking down at her feet, fidgeting with the seatbelt.

“You look just the right amount of weird to me. It’s good,” he said, and Camila felt a small smile on her own lips for the first time since everything went bad earlier.

“Thank you,” she said, it was the first time she thanked someone for telling her she was weird. It was nice.

When they arrived at the hospital, Reyes left her for a moment with a nurse that was making sure she was okay, checking her pulse, pressure, and looking for bruises. She had still a quick pulse, but overall everything was all right. 

“Are you okay?” the officer asked, as soon as he came back, he looked kind of tense.

Camila nodded. “I told you I was. My parents will be here soon. You don’t have to wait with me.”

The man bit his lips, wondering what to do. “I don’t want to leave you alone, just… would you mind if we waited inside?”

“No, it’s okay.”

The officer thanked her with the most honest smile since they met and he quickly paced to the acceptance desk, showing off his badge. “Officer Carlos Reyes, APD. I’m looking for Tyler Kennedy Strand, he was brought here with an ambulance half an hour ago.”

The woman at the desk looked down at some papers. “Room 428, fourth floor.”

“Do you already have his emergency contact?”

“Yes sir, his father has been alerted, he's on his way.

He thanked her quickly and walked away fast, Camila barely keeping up with his pace. She wondered how the man had got the stranger’s identity, he must have checked his documents while Camila wasn’t looking, even if she didn’t remember a moment when it could have happened. 

She didn’t like the idea of the officer interrogating him while he was in the hospital, but Reyes had been kind to her and she didn’t want it to stop, so she didn’t want to push.

They stepped into the elevator and the officer kept fidgeting with his badge, still holding it and playing with it.

“Are you okay?” Camila asked, and the man flinched.

“What?”

“Are you okay sir?”

“Of course I’m okay,” he said, but his voice betrayed him. Camila didn’t comment on it.

When the elevator stopped on the fourth floor and they started looking for room 428, nobody stopped them, probably because the man was in his police uniform and he looked like he would have rather killed someone than to be messed with at the moment.

When they found the room the door was open, and they peeked inside. The stranger was laying in bed with his eyes closed, the bruises that had been red now bright purple on his face and neck, but he looked less pale than half an hour earlier, when Camila was desperately trying to stop the blood.

There was a man dressed in a nurse gown checking his vitals, when he heard them step inside and looked up at them. He was about to tell them to go away but when he saw the APD uniform he closed his mouth.

“How’s him?” Reyes asked, his voice firm.

“He just got a transfusion, and we patched him up. The stab wound missed his liver for a few inches. He’s got it bad on his face and a few broken ribs, but it could have been much worse. He’s a lucky guy. He could wake up any moment, but I don’t think it’ll be best for him to be interrogated soon. He needs rest.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” the officer said, and the nurse frowned, but he didn’t ask him why the hell he wasn’t going away if he wasn’t going to interrogate him.

He nodded briefly to excuse himself and left. 

“Please, have a sit. You must be tired,” he said then, and Camila realised it was true, she really was beyond tired. She took the only seat next to the bed and looked up at the officer, who was leaning on the wall, looking at the man on the bed with worry and what looked like resigned fondness in his eyes.

Camila frowned. She didn’t think cops were usually so concerned for the people they rescued, and she didn’t think they usually visited them at the hospital on shift.

“Sorry if I make you wait here, but I didn’t want to leave any of you alone, and I know he’s going to ask for you as soon as he wakes up.

“I don’t think so,” Camila muttered, “I don’t even know him.”

The officer smiled and said “but I d-” but before he could finish the sentence, the stranger, _Tyler,_ Camila reminded herself, made a small noise and closed his fists.

“TK?” Reyes called, hopeful.

At the sound of his voice Tyler opened his eyes, still unfocused, then he looked at where he was and gasped, trying to prop himself up on his elbows. 

The officer was next to him so fast Camila didn’t even realise he had moved at all. “Easy, easy tiger,” he said, and the smile he gave him lit up his entire face. He stroked his cheek in affection and Camila frowned again. “You gave me quite the scare.”

“Carlos,” the stranger croaked, then cleared his voice. “What happened?” he asked, then he tensed. “The girls! Carlos, there were those girls, they were harassing them, you have to look for them, they could-”

“They’re okay,” Reyes whispered, his voice warm and filled with affection. “Look, there’s one of them here.”

“Hey,” Camila said with a shy smile, waving her hand, and the man looked at her in surprise.

“Oh, thank God,” he sighed, falling back with his head on the pillow and closing his eyes. “Are you okay kid? Where’s your girlfriend?”

“We’re both okay,” Camila reassured, “she ran away as soon as they punched you. I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, it’s okay. It was the most sensible thing to do,” he reasoned.

“Oh, really?” Reyes asked raising his brow. “and here I thought the most sensible thing to do was calling an armed man a _dumb ugly monkey_.”

The young man smiled. “In my defense, he _did_ look like a dumb ugly monkey and he certainly acted like one. Wait, how do you-” he whispered, then he glared at Camila. “You traitor! You told him!”

The girl couldn’t help but smile a bit. He liked the man. “Sorry sir,” she said with a half grin.

“Why do you have to be that stupid? Why didn’t you call the police in the first place? You don’t have to engage in a fight alone. That’s what we stand for.” Reyes said, he sounded exhausted, like he had told this exact thing hundreds of times before. It wasn’t the usual tone the police used with their witnesses.

“I thought I could handle it.”

“ _Of course_ you thought you could handle it, you always do, you hideous repentless brat!” 

_Well, this sounds a bit much,_ Camila thought with a frown.

The man didn’t look offended at all. He had a smug grin on his face. “But I’m _your_ brat, am I?” he asked, and the second later the policeman was sighing softly and bending down to kiss him on the lips.

Camila looked at them like she just saw Sailor Moon riding a T-Rex in the middle of her living room.

Now everything made sense. The pale face, the panic, the awkwardness, the waiting in the room, the understanding when she told him about Cara, everything.

“Shut up,” Reyes whispered as he pulled away, trying to hide a smile. His voice was soft and sweet. “Next time they call me on duty and it turns out it’s you doing stupid reckless shit I’m leaving you to deal with it alone.”

The threat didn’t sound even barely sincere.

“As if,” Tyler scoffed, and yes, Camila really liked him. She really liked the both of them.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she looked at it in concern. “My parents are here,” she whispered, then looked up at the man who brought her here, with pleading eyes.

“Please, don’t tell them what happened! Tell them they robbed me or something! They don’t know I was with Cara, they don’t know that about me, please, I can’t tell them!”

It wasn’t like Camila knew her parents weren’t going to accept her, or that they were openly homophobes; but they never showed clear openness towards queer people either, so she had no idea about what they thought on the matter and she couldn’t bring herself to ask them, she feared what she could find out.

“He won’t tell anyone,” the man named Tyler said, “right Carlos?”

“I’ll be vague enough,” Reyes shrugged. “I’m going down with her but I’ll be back soon, okay? Your father is on his way.”

Tyler groaned. “He’s going to kill me.”

“I don’t think so,” Reyes said, “not this time.”

He lowered himself again on him and Camila looked away to let them say goodbye. She heard happy sighs as they kissed, and smiled.

“Don’t be long,” Tyler’s voice said.

“I promise,” the other one replied immediately, and Camila had no doubt he was going to keep that promise for dear life.

When they walked back to the elevator, the man looked like a completely different person than the one that stepped on it the first time. He was smiling, really smiling this time, his muscles were relaxed and his face wasn’t so pale anymore.

“Unless you’re hundred percent sure it’s not safe you should tell your parents, you know. It’ll feel better. It did with me,” he said.

“I don’t know. I have no idea about how they could react. It could go really bad.”

“Or it could go really good,” he said.

“I don’t believe in good things happening,” she whispered, and felt a hand on her shoulder. She tensed for a moment, then immediately calmed down.

“I know it doesn’t look like it sometimes,” the man said, “but you will be happy, I promise.”

The elevator stopped, and she flinched. She wasn’t ready to lie to them, not now, not after this disastrous day. It was going to be exhausting.

“Do you trust me? I’ll help you find out,” officer Reyes, _Carlos,_ said. 

Camila found that she did, so she nodded. 

Her parents were at the front desk, looking more worried than ever. 

“Camila!” her father said, running towards them, and crushing her in a hug. 

“Sir, ma’am, good afternoon. I’m sorry if we scared you, everything is under control, now,” Carlos said with a polite smile.

“What happened to her?” Camila heard her mother ask, her father still holding her close.

“A group of men harassed her and one of her friends, a civilian intervened and they started to fight. I brought Camila here to let someone check on her but she wasn’t harmed. The civilian got stabbed, but he’s already recovering.”

“Thank you,” her father said, squeezing her some more. “We really can’t thank you enough for keeping an eye on her and bringing her here.”

“Dad…” she groaned, trying to part from the hug.

“No worries sir, it’s my job!” he said, then looked at Camila with a small knowing smile. “Besides, my boyfriend is the one who got stabbed, so I was going to get here anyway.”

Camila felt her blood run cold. 

_They’re going to be cold and push him away,_ she thought. _They’re going to take their thanks back. And I’ll know I’m not going to be able to tell them ever._

Her mother surprised her. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. How is he? Please, tell him we thank him too. Will he be okay?”

“Yes ma’am, he will be okay. I’ll tell him you said thank you.”

“You’re good men, you deserve each other,” her father said, and Camila stared at him in shock. “If I can do something for any of you please, tell me. Thanks for helping out my kid. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“ _Dad,_ ” Camila repeated, her cheeks warmer, “you’re embarrassing me in front of the officer.”

“Sorry darling,” he said, his voice filled with affection. Her mother chuckled. 

She looked up at the man and he winked at her with a grin. 

_Thanks_ , she mouthed, then said “goodbye sir. Tell Tyler I say thank you.”

“Will do,” he said, smiling. “Good luck with, well, _everything_.”

“Thank you,” she said, then urged her parents to leave.

“I’m so lucky you found a good man to stand up for you, baby,” her mother said, rubbing her hair as they went out. “And a decent officer, those are rare to find. Another one would have blamed you only because you were there.”

“No wonder why they’re a couple, this town lacks good people, the few we have need to stay together to stay sane,” her father said, and she felt a rush of adrenaline all through her.

Carlos served her with the opportunity, she had proof her parents weren’t hostile to the ones like her, so she knew she could do this.

 _Not anything that can go wrong will go wrong, after all_ , she thought.

Maybe this wasn’t how she pictured her first date to end, being harassed, stood up for, brought to the hospital, and finally finding out her parents were LGBT friendly, but it probably was even better this way. And maybe, maybe Cara was going to talk to her again after everything that happened. It wasn’t her fault after all.

“Mom, dad, I have to tell you something…” Camila said, and for the first time she didn’t dread those words in her mouth.

“Anything, sweetheart. Do tell.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy pride month 🌈 be safe, everyone ✨ ily


End file.
